2.4 Maintaining and Evolving
Handling bugs, adding features, knowing when to stop.
Your App Is a Living Thing
Software is never "done." But that does not mean you should work on it constantly. The goal is to maintain it with minimal effort and add features only when they solve real problems.
Handling Bugs
Bugs will happen. When they do:
- Write down what happened — what did you click, what did you expect, what actually happened?
- Tell your AI assistant — describe the bug in plain language
- Fix and test — make the fix, then test the exact scenario that broke
- Deploy — push the fix live
Most bugs in a simple app like this are small: a field that does not validate correctly, a page that looks wrong on a specific phone, a database query that returns the wrong results.
Adding Features
Before adding any feature, ask:
- Am I adding this because I need it, or because it would be cool? Only add things you actually need.
- Will this make the app harder to use? More features often mean more confusion.
- Can I explain this feature in one sentence? If not, it is probably too complex.
Good features to add later
- Email notifications when a new student submits the intake form
- A simple scheduling view for upcoming sessions
- Export session data to a spreadsheet
Features to avoid (for now)
- Payment processing
- Student login accounts
- Chat or messaging
- Mobile app versions
Knowing When to Stop
Your app is a tool, not a product. It serves your tutoring practice. When it does that job well, stop building and start tutoring.
Signs you are done (for now):
- New students can sign up without you managing a text thread
- You can log sessions in under 30 seconds
- You know how many hours you tutored this week without counting manually
- Parents say the form was easy to fill out
What You've Built
You started this course with a problem: running a tutoring practice with scattered tools. You now have:
- A professional intake form
- An admin dashboard
- A deployed web app
- The knowledge to iterate and maintain it
You built it yourself. That is the point.